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And then, my partner _______ (and suprised you)

01-16-2017, 12:30 PM

Tell us about a time when a partner did something you did not expect, or revealed a talent or skill you never knew about.

I was back at LAPD Hollywood, one night. I was working with this guy I could not stand. He had a bad attitude about most everything. We had just checked out and loaded our car and were going to hit the street at 11:30 pm when a car pulled into the police station parking lot. The driver jumped out screaming, "He's got a knife! He's robbing me!" We sprang into action taking the kid into custody. The kid tells us he's a street hustler and the driver picked him up for sex. Yes, he did have a knife "for protection", but he wasn't robbing the guy. We still arrested him for robbery but it's what the driver did next which brought out my partner's hidden talent.

The robbery victim/driver had the odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath, as well as many other objective symptoms of intoxication. When he talked about the robbery, he was clear, concise, and spoke in slightly accented English. When the discussion went from the "robbery" to the fact he'd been driving while intoxicated, the guy starts speaking German and protesting his innocence and proclaiming his ignorance of what we were talking to him about. That's when my partner started speaking FLUENT German, shocking both the driver and ME! It was as if my partner had just been dropped off by a Lufthansa flight from Berlin. He conducted the entire FST and GCI in German, as well as the booking process. The driver was furious.

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There was an old LAPD tale about a Main Street beat cop who walked into a bar where a fight was in progress. He was alone and this was the days before hand-held radios. As the fight went on, he walked over to the piano against the wall and sat down. He played piano with such skill and so fervently, that the crowd stopped fighting and listened to him. He went on to finish his piece and the crowd applauded. The fight was over and he cleared the scene.

Three things I know for sure: (1) No bad deed goes unrewarded, (2) No good deed goes unpunished, and (3) It is entirely possible to push the most devoted, loyal and caring person beyond the point where they no longer give a 5h!t.

One of my officers escaped from Czechoslovakia when it was under Communist rule.and (believe it or not) joined the French Foreign Legion). He spent about 15 years in the Legion before arriving in America and becoming a citizen. He eventually went to work for my agency and loved to work graveyard out of our Central Los Angeles office.

Tony (or the Bounced Czech as he liked to call himself) spoke 13 languages fluently, none of them English. On morning watch, calls often came across the LAPD scanner, usually from Hollywood or Rampart, asking for any officer who spoke one exotic foreign language or another. Because Tony seemed to speak them all, he would amble over to the location and translate to help out another agency.

Back then PCP was just starting to hit the streets as the new drug of choice and Tony made one our first DUI arrests of someone under the influence of PCP. The suspect was in our office, handcuffed in a chair and was pretty mellow. Tony started to interrogate him in Czechoslovakian English. He started calmly, but began to slowly build up until his demeanor, inflection and tone became insistent, demanding and stereotypically like what you would see during a German interrogation scene in a WW II movie. Then in mid-sentence he switched from English to Czechoslovakian. While you couldn't understand a world he was saying, his demeanor, tone and inflection made it clear he was asking questions and demanding answers. After a minute or so he switched back to English and asked, "What's the matter? Don't you understand English? Watch my lips, dude!" Then he began asking more demanding questions in Czechoslovakian.

At this point the suspect's eyes began to bug out from his head so far we thought they were going to pop and he began to mutter something about never doing that drug again.

Going too far is half the pleasure of not getting anywhere

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I work with a reserve officer who is a university professor of physics for his day job. He is the most down to Earth guy you'd ever want to meet. One day the Chief and Captain went to his college office to meet him so they could go out to lunch. They walked in to find him standing in front of this huge chalk board that covered two walls that had ONE GIGANTIC math problem on it, and this guy was trying to solve the problem. When he saw them walk in the room, he just shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

We kinda knew he was able to do this since he was a professor, but it's just that he doesn't show off or act as if he is better than anyone.

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I worked with a Sheriffs Dept reserve deputy that had an eidetic memory. He once memorized the phone book and could recall any person listed there, if you needed a number he would give it along with the address listed. He also could recall arrests made in years past giving details like arrest number, name, date of birth, charge and any aliases of the person he arrested.

Train for tomorrow, for you never know what it will bring to the fight.
In the school of Policing, there is no graduation day.

Arguing on the internet, is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while you realize that while you are getting dirty, the pig is actually enjoying it.
Do Not Disturb sign should read, Already Disturbed Proceed With Caution.Even if the voices aren't real, They have some really good ideas.

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What about those closet martial arts guys?
We had a detective filling in our shift one night. Pretty skinny guy.. just didn't look like a fighter. One night he had a foot pursuit, ran the suspect down, and then scrapped with him for a good minute til backup arrived. When the dust settled, it turned out the suspect had a gun. But he never had a change to use it because the detective had him twisted up like a pretzel. After the fact, I found out the detective is an avid jiu jitsu practitioner. He's become kind of legendary on our shift because we had been looking for that suspect for more than a month, and he'd already given us the slip once.

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One of my officers escaped from Czechoslovakia when it was under Communist rule.and (believe it or not) joined the French Foreign Legion). He spent about 15 years in the Legion before arriving in America and becoming a citizen. He eventually went to work for my agency and loved to work graveyard out of our Central Los Angeles office.

Tony (or the Bounced Czech as he liked to call himself) spoke 13 languages fluently, none of them English. On morning watch, calls often came across the LAPD scanner, usually from Hollywood or Rampart, asking for any officer who spoke one exotic foreign language or another. Because Tony seemed to speak them all, he would amble over to the location and translate to help out another agency.

Back then PCP was just starting to hit the streets as the new drug of choice and Tony made one our first DUI arrests of someone under the influence of PCP. The suspect was in our office, handcuffed in a chair and was pretty mellow. Tony started to interrogate him in Czechoslovakian English. He started calmly, but began to slowly build up until his demeanor, inflection and tone became insistent, demanding and stereotypically like what you would see during a German interrogation scene in a WW II movie. Then in mid-sentence he switched from English to Czechoslovakian. While you couldn't understand a world he was saying, his demeanor, tone and inflection made it clear he was asking questions and demanding answers. After a minute or so he switched back to English and asked, "What's the matter? Don't you understand English? Watch my lips, dude!" Then he began asking more demanding questions in Czechoslovakian.

At this point the suspect's eyes began to bug out from his head so far we thought they were going to pop and he began to mutter something about never doing that drug again.